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Research partnerships between ‘thinkers’ and ‘doers’ are now thought likely to deliver more useful and useable knowledge for health and social care. So far there is little guidance about making these academic/operational links work on the ground. We have used our own experiences of this approach, together with evidence from existing literature, to explore such partnerships. We conclude that, while they are fine in principle, it is difficult in practice to balance the twin demands of operational relevance and academic rigour. Such links may need rather different and better resourcing if they are to work properly.

This is the third in a series of articles about trying to develop better evidence for a service on the health/social care interface. All are based on our experiences of carrying out a comparative study of residential rehabilitation for older people. The first two dealt with methodology and implementation. Now we reflect on the completion of the project and the first stages of dissemination.

This is the second article about our comparative study of joint health and social care rehabilitation for older people. We discuss what has worked well so far, and how we have tackled the various obstacles to doing systematic research across two complex organisations. We describe our sample group and report on data collection so far.

This is the first of two articles about evaluating a residential rehabilitation service for older people. It highlights some key principles about research on the health/social care interface, which may be useful to others doing similar work. Here we describe the methodology and how it was chosen. In the next article we will discuss the baseline data findings.

Aims to identify the positive and negative impact that the NHS Clinical Governance Support Team’s (CGST) Clinical Governance Development Programme (CGDP) was perceived to have (or failed to have) on delegates, working practices and work relationships. Data were collected with a random sample of 500 delegates who had participated in the CGDP. Indicates that the CGDP was successful in meeting its aims, with participants reporting that their views or behaviours had changed on a number of items. Subjects reported an increase in their skills, knowledge, clarity and structure in their work and improved communication between clinical teams. Participation in the CGDP had a positive impact on the individuals’ professional development. Major benefits were reported as: networking and sharing with other professionals from a diverse range of clinical and geographical areas, taking time to reflect and plan, and development of a new set of skills. Some participants who reported little or no progress attributed the main factors hindering change to shortage of time, resources, workforce migration and the debilitating impact of continuous change in the NHS.

IN his admirable survey of library methods and problems in Great Britain, read—unfortunately by proxy—at the St. Louis meeting of the American Library Association, which the author of this paper had the pleasure of hearing, Mr. Bond, in writing of open access, was courageous enough to say that the system in question was the system of the future. It is true that he put that future a long way off, but it is none the less creditable to Mr. Bond's fairness and foresight that he recognises and admits that some time the system of shelf access—perhaps a better term than open access—is bound to prevail, and become the rule rather than the exception in the library administration of this country. One has therefore a shrewd suspicion that much of the fierceness with which the system and the personalities of those who have adopted and approved it, have been assailed, is due to an uneasy feeling on the part of its opponents that time is on the other side, and that they can at best only put the clock back, not stop it.

This paper aims to report verbatim the voices of older people describing their experiences of rehabilitation services in community hospitals and local authority short‐term residential units followed by “usual care” services at home. It aims to contribute directly to the implementation of the DH Section 256 “reablement guidance”.

The paper is a qualitative study, based on semi‐structured face‐to‐face interviews in 2002/3, with 42 participants (mean age 81.4 years) using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA).

Four main themes emerged from users' comments: the complexity of rehabilitative need, the influence of the setting, the role of the staff and the availability of reablement support back at home.

Qualitative studies have limited generalisability, but these findings are consistent both with other studies of user experience and with earlier related evidence about assessment, institutionalisation and psychological factors.

The findings clearly demonstrate changing rehabilitative needs along the care pathway, with implications for commissioners and providers of reablement services. The findings bring a user perspective to current debates about the integration of services and the use of pooled budgets.

Effective reablement is critically dependent on service users' co‐operation and motivation. It therefore needs to be highly responsive to their needs and views. This study offers specific user views about their experiences in different settings and at different stages of reablement, together with their ideas for how it might work better. The data are analysed within a single framework, offering an example of the type of local evaluation currently sought by the Department of Health.

Secure children’s homes (SCHs) restrict the liberty of young people considered to be a danger to themselves or others. However, not all young people referred to SCHs find a placement, and little is known about the outcomes of the young person after an SCH or alternative placement. The purpose of this paper is to understand which characteristics most likely predict allocation to an SCH placement, and to explore the outcomes of the young people in the year after referral.

A retrospective electronic cohort study was conducted using linked social care data sets in England. The study population was all young people from England referred to SCHs for welfare reasons between 1st October 2016 to 31st March 2018 (n = 527). Logistic regression tested for differences in characteristics of SCH placement allocation and outcomes in the year after referral.

In total, 60% of young people referred to an SCH were allocated a place. Factors predicting successful or unsuccessful SCH allocation were previous placement in an SCH (OR = 2.12, p = 0.01); being female (OR = 2.26, p = 0.001); older age (OR = 0.75, p = 0.001); and a history of challenging behaviour (OR = 0.34, p = 0.01). In the year after referral, there were little differences in outcomes between young people placed in a SCH versus alternative accommodation.

The study raised concerns about the capacity of current services to recognise and meet the needs of this complex and vulnerable group of young people and highlights the necessity to explore and evaluate alternatives to SCHs.

This exploratory study aims to examine the influence of immigrant employee effects within a sample of small New Zealand‐based international service providers.

Seven immigrant employees from six firms were interviewed. The interviews examined immigrant effects on four areas: knowledge transfer and application; customer relationships; marketing strategy and market entry mode. Propositions derived from the literature were tentatively tested.

The findings, consistent with other literature on immigrant effects, indicated that immigrant employees play an important role in shaping these areas within small international service firms. Of particular importance was knowledge of local culture and market conditions. Immigrant employees enjoyed considerable discretion in the creation and management of customer relationships.

There appeared to be strong interactions between the value of immigrant knowledge, relationships and the characteristics of service offerings. The results established have provided guidance for researchers when formulating their research frameworks concerning market entry mode, international marketing strategy, knowledge transfer, immigrant employees and so on. Managers should also consider employing the outcomes of this research when designing their international human resource management and marketing strategies. However, these exploratory findings should be confirmed by future research which is formulated with a larger sample size. Only then can the contributions of this study be considered more definite.